the difference between political and philosophical freedom

1

The American University in Cairo

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

The Difference between Political and Philosophical Freedom

in the Completed Works of Hannah Arendt

A Thesis Submitted to

The Department of Philosophy

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of Master of Arts

By

Khadeega Mohammed Ga’far

Under the supervision of Prof. Graham Harman

December 2015

2

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to sincerely thank my advisor Prof. Graham Harman, who has been very

supportive and inspiring from the very beginning until the very end of completing the

thesis. I am also grateful to Dr. Alessandro Topa and Dr. Rashmika Pandaya, whose

comments and critiques on the first draft of the thesis have been significant in getting it

into its final shape.

Moreover, appreciation is due to Prof. Steffen Stelzer and Dr. Richard Fincham

whose direction in the process of the proposal writing was very important and influential

at that stage. Furthermore, I cannot go without mentioning Mrs. Aya Morsi whose effort

and cooperation in smoothing the administrative process is much appreciated.

I also wish to express my thankfulness to my mother, my brother, and my sisters

whose encouragement was vital for my morale during writing. Finally, my heartfelt

gratitude goes to my husband, Ismail, whose love and care is always indispensable for my

spirit, particularly since he has put himself at risk for the sake of standing by me in such a

precious moment.

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DEDICATION

To prisoners of conscience

who has been deprived of the World for their words and deeds

4

ABSTRACT

Hannah Arendt distinguishes between two different practices of freedom whose origins

are rooted into two historical human experiences: political freedom/action and

philosophical freedom/free will. She argues that the two experiences were different as

concerns the origin, the location and the conditions of each. Freedom of the will, or

philosophical freedom, is relevant only in solitude while political freedom is relevant to

people living together in political communities. Arendt also claims that the freedom of

the will is the origin of the ideal of sovereignty which constitutes its meaning in

commanding and demanding obedience. Hence, the free will realizes its freedom at the

expense of oppressing one’s self and oppressing others. In addition to presenting the

Arendtian accounts on the two types of freedom, I shall argue that Arendt’s notion of new

beginnings is an attempt to transform the faculty of will from a faculty which realizes

itself in commanding, either itself or others, to a faculty that realizes itself in initiating

new beginnings with others in the public realm.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgment……………………………………………………………... 2

Dedication ……... ………………………………………………………… 3

Abstract ………………………………………………………………… 4

I Introduction ………………………………………………………… 6

II Political Freedom ………………………………………………… 10

A. Vita Activa and the Human Condition ………………………… 11

1. The Three Categories of Human Activity ………… 11

2. The Aristotelian Bios Politikos and Vita Activa ………… 13

3. The Life and The World ………………………………… 20

4. Natality and Mortality ………………………………… 23

5. Immortality and The Common ………………………… 25

B. The Political, The Action and Freedom ………………………… 28

1. The Human Condition of Plurality and the Public Realm… 28

2. Action and Freedom ………………………………… 33

C. Time and The Faculty of Choice ………………………………… 37

III Philosophical Freedom ………………………………………… 40

A. The Concept of Time and The Concept of Inner Life ………… 40

B. The Discovery of The Will ………………………………… 43

1. Paul and Epictetus ………………………………………… 44

2. Unifying The Will ………………………………………… 47

3. Who was willing to Pay The Price ………………… 48

a. Autonomy and Limitation……………..……… 49

b. The Characteristic of The Will………………… 50

c. The Unconditional Bias to Freedom ………… 51

d. Causality and Contingency ………………… 53

C. The Modern Age ………………………………………………… 56

IV The Relation ………………………………………………………… 58

A. The Three Aspects of Differentiation ………………………… 58

1. The Origin ………………………………………………… 58

2. The Location ………………………………………… 61

3. The Conditions ………………………………………… 63

B. The Reversal and The Problem of Sovereignty ………………… 65

V The Transformation ………………………………………………… 69

VI Conclusion……………………………………………………………. 73

Bibliography………………………………………………………….. 74

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I INTRODUCTION

In The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt concludes that human beings experience two

types of freedom, namely, political freedom and philosophical freedom. Through a

genealogical and historical account of freedom and free will, she infers that both types

are completely distinct in their origin, nature, and appearance. The most essential feature

that renders them different is the multiplicity of political freedom versus singularity in

philosophical freedom. In other words, political freedom is a phenomenon of a multitude

acting together, while philosophical freedom is a phenomenon of individual free will.1

It is quite paradoxical that both types of freedom, the political and the

philosophical, originally came from outside the philosophical tradition. Political freedom,

according to Arendt, was first experienced as human reality in the Greek polis; however,

Greek philosophy was the reversal of the reality of the polis, not its representation.

Philosophical freedom was born in the religious and Stoic experiences of the first century

A.D. Later in the Middle Ages, the problem of freedom was discussed in theology, which

transferred the problem to the discipline of philosophy. Therefore, philosophy had to deal

with a double difficulty: that of theology and that stemming from the perplexing problem

itself. This is why the problem of freedom “has been the last of the time-honored great

metaphysical questions…to become a topic of philosophic inquiry at all,”2 in comparison

to eternity, time, being, and so forth.

1 We will see later how plurality is the human condition of action. Arendt, The Human Condition, 15. Also

Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 199. 2Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” 145.

7

In this thesis, I shall explain how Arendt came to the two conclusions regarding

her unique understanding of the concept of freedom. The first conclusion argues that

there are two human experiences of freedom that existed in different conditions. The

second conclusion states that these two types of freedom are distinct.3 Two main aspects

clarify this distinction. The first concerns their separate origin in human experience,

which brought each of them into existence. The second involves the conditions that

specify and qualify both experiences.

Arendt explains that while political freedom originates in the ancient Greek polis

and finds its manifestation in praxis, philosophical freedom has a twofold origin in the

religious experience of Christianity and (even earlier) in the philosophical experience of

stoicism. Both of these experiences led to the discovery of the inner man, where the will

dwells.4 Moreover, the conditions of political freedom, on the one hand, and the

conditions of philosophical freedom on the other hand are completely different. Political

freedom is only possible under the condition of plurality, where fellow men found a

body-politic regulated by norms and laws and create organized public spaces, where they

can act together. Philosophical freedom, by contrast, is only possible on the condition of

solitude. Hence, no organized public space is required in order to experience internal or

philosophical freedom, and no fellows are needed.5

3 I write “unique” understanding because Arendt was the first thinker to point out that there is such

difference. Only, Montesquieu, as Arendt also remarked, has also noticed the difference. This remark will

be explained later in the section of relation. 4 Arendt discusses the origin of political freedom in her book: The Human Condition in while she discusses

the origin of philosophical freedom in her book: The Life of the Mind/willing. 5 Arendt, The Life of the Mind/ Willing, 199.

8

Arendt’s inference that the two types of freedom are distinct stimulates us to ask

whether the two types relate to each other, or whether they are entirely unrelated. Arendt

does not address the question of their relation explicitly; however, she points out that the

two kinds of freedom are opposed. In other words, the existence of one necessarily

nullifies the existence of the other. To be more specific, Arendt says that we normally

experience philosophical freedom through our faculty of will, or what she calls “I-will.”

In contrast, when we experience political freedom, we experience our actual abilities or

what she calls “I-can.” Because the I-will constitutes itself in commands, philosophical

freedom ends up in domination, while political freedom constitutes itself in the I-can;

thus, it ends up in cooperation with others because no one is capable by himself. The

latter is a completely external phenomenon, which takes place between equal agents that

are acting together and are not commanding each other, i.e. the phenomenon is an

intersubjective one. Thus, political freedom has no internal existence. We will see later

how the I-will, which is a completely internal phenomenon, crosses its boundaries to

realize itself as a commanding faculty demanding complete obedience and submission

from others.6 This is what Arendt claims to be the origin of the problem of sovereignty.

The paradoxical result is that the mental faculty which we habitually consider to be the

faculty of the very experience of human freedom, ends in the utter dominance of one will

over the wills of others, who end up by being completely deprived of their freedom. From

this perspective, the will, paradoxically enough, is an organ for domination when it

extends itself to the public realm.

6 In the 4

th section: relation.

9

In this thesis, in addition to explaining and summarizing the Arendtian theory of

the two freedoms, I claim that Arendt seeks to transform the faculty of will from a faculty

that realizes itself in commanding and obeying, both internally and externally, to a

faculty that realizes itself in the act of beginning. Arendt does not state explicitly that she

is seeking a transformation of the faculty of will. However, I will argue that since she

sees no compromise between the domination-seeking faculty and freedom, she wants to

abolish the domination of the faculty of will and to direct the will towards the outer

world, where it experiences the freedom of action in inciting a beginning with others.

How does Arendt transform the faculty of will from an organ of domination into

an organ of freedom? I shall explore the subject by following the Arendtian argument

through three main phases. First, I will explain what she means by political and

philosophical freedom. Second, I will address the difference between the two types and

the relationship between them. Third, I will arrive at the crux of the thesis, which is

arguing why Arendt transformed the faculty of will into a faculty of beginning.

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II POLITICAL FREEDOM

Arendt argues that the Greeks, shaped by their life in the polis, experienced a reality of

freedom that has no connection to the Will.7 This claim is strange since we, in our

modern times, tend to think that freedom is an expression of the Will. For us, the Will is

the mainspring of action, which bears responsibility for experiencing ourselves as free

agents.8 Bearing in mind this modern understanding of relating action to the will,

Arendt’s analysis that Greeks experienced freedom in the polis, and at the same time, this

experience is not an expression of the faculty of Will would be problematic. If the Greeks

were unaware of the faculty of will, as Arendt maintains, then freedom for them is not a

phenomenon of I-will.9 Hence, the question guiding the argument is: what is freedom an

expression of? Moreover, if the Greeks did not discover the faculty of the Will, how can

the faculty of choice, which was already discussed by Aristotle, be understood as

different from the faculty of Will? 10

To address this issue, I shall explain how Arendt describes and depicts the

Greek’s polis, how Greeks interpreted human activity as Arendt analyzes and why they

did not discover the faculty of Will. In the following three subsections, I shall explain:

first, Vita Activa and the Human Condition; second, the Political, Action and Freedom;

and third, Time and the Faculty of Choice.

7 Arendt’s method in understanding freedom is to look into Greek experience as an exemplary and basic

human experience. 8 Arendt, The Life of the Mind/ Willing, 57.

9 Arendt coins the terms: I-will and I-can to refer to the relation of the subject to philosophical and political

freedom consequently. I-can indicates the subject’s ability to act in the political realm, while I-will

indicates subject’s internal willing of a thing that might be experienced inside only or might project

externally as well. 10

Arendt, The Life of the Mind/ Willing, 55-63. In the discussion of the faculty of choice in Aristotle,

Arendt refers to De Anima, Nichomachean Ethics and Eudemien Ethics.

11

II. A. Vita Activa and the Human Condition

II. A. 1. The Three Categories of Human Activity

Arendt argues that the Greeks experienced living through two realms only: the private

realm or household, and the public realm or polis. This sharp distinction of life into two

realms determined how Ancient Greeks interpreted and differentiated their activities, and

where they assigned the location of each. Human activities could be one of three main

types. First: activities subsumed under labor, which are the activities related to the

necessities of the body and the sustenance of life. Second: activities subsumed under

work, which are the activities related to making useful things. Third: activities subsumed

under action, which are the activities related to interacting with ones’ fellow men in the

polis by words and by deeds.11

Arendt asserts that the Greek life in the polis was characterized by assigning

every activity to its proper location. Labor, which corresponds to the necessities of life,

was kept inside the walls of the household (the private space) and was assigned mainly to

slaves. Work, which corresponds to making and to fabrication, was done in private spaces

by craftsmen, yet exhibited in public space, in the polis. Action, which corresponds to

interaction with ones’ free and equal fellows, was the political activity par excellence and

was the prerogative of freemen or citizens.12

These three categories were mentioned by

Aristotle in the Politics, where he states: “Life as a whole is divided …into occupation

11

Arendt, The Human Condition, 12, 28. 12

Ibid., 7-30.

12

and leisure… and of matters involving action some are directed toward necessary and

useful things, others toward noble things.”13

Taking into consideration that by the term “action” in this passage Aristotle

denotes the human activity in general, it is conspicuous that he almost puts both the

categories of useful and necessary things on one side and noble things on the other.14

In

other words, Aristotle puts the slave, who bears the burden of maintaining life’s

necessities, and the craftsman, who makes useful things and artifacts, in close proximity.

However, he places the one who does “noble things” in a higher rank. He even holds that

the purpose of keeping the necessary and the useful is to facilitate and to make the life of

who does noble things possible. As he puts it: “…necessary and useful things [are taken

care of by slaves and craftsmen] for the sake of noble things.”15

The Aristotelian hierarchy denotes that the basic principle of division and ranking

is whether there is an equal choice for either doing or not-doing a particular activity. It is

recognizable that for the activities dictated by life necessities, there is no other choice but

to do them to ensure survival. Hence, the one who is devoted to this activity solely is

unfree and the activity itself is not noble.16

Moreover, the ranking of activities implies an

inescapable inequality between the individuals performing the activities. Those who are

busy satisfying the needs of the necessary and the making of the useful things are unequal

to those who are capable of devoting their lives to doing noble things. The ranking of the

three categories of human activities in general, and the highest rank given to the “noble

13

Aristotle, Politics, 1333a30. 14

This is not the position of Arendt. Arendt distinguishes sharply between the three types of activities and

deals with them separately. 15

Aristotle, Politics, 1333a35. 16

This is in the Aristotelian sense.

13

things,” in particular, is what gave rise to the Aristotle’s conception of Bios Politikos,

which I shall discuss in the following sub-section.

II. A. 2. The Aristotelian Bios Politikos and Vita Activa

With the phrase Bios Politikos, Aristotle designates three main activities that could be

practiced freely. The activities of the Bios Politikos are all concerned solely with “the

beautiful.” A free man could adopt one of the three ways of life:

the life of enjoying bodily pleasures in which the beautiful, as it is given, is

consumed; the life devoted to the matters of the polis, in which excellence

produces beautiful deeds; and the life of the philosopher devoted to inquiry into,

and contemplation of, things eternal, whose everlasting beauty can neither be

brought about through the producing interference of man nor be changed through

his consumption of them.17

In this passage, Aristotle considers the way of life of the philosopher as of the same rank

as the way of life of the one who enjoys bodily pleasures and the one who is devoted to

matters of the polis even though “contemplation,” which is the main thing the

philosopher is busy with, does not seem to be an activity.

There are two points that could be inferred from the Aristotelian’s Bios Politikos.

First, the three activities are activities of free men in the polis or the public realm.

Second, Bios Politikos (or the life devoted to noble things), unlike the activities devoted

to the necessary and useful things, could be done or left undone without coercion. Thus,

the three activities all count for free acts. Praxis (action) and lexis (speech) are means of

action in the Aristotelian categories of Bios Politikos. And, hence, action and speech are

17

Arendt, The Human Condition, 13. Arendt did not refer to text-passage by Aristotle for this paraphrase

by her.

14

of the same rank for the Greeks. Both were correlated with the free way of life that

slaves, women, and craftsmen were deprived of in order to enable the free life of who has

the potential to deal with the beautiful.

Bios Politikos was later translated in the Middle Ages as Vita Activa. Although it

kept “its original meaning: a life devoted to public-political matters”18

in Augustine’s

philosophy, it lost the Greek meaning in the late Middle Ages, at the exact moment when

“the original Greek understanding of politics had been lost.”19

Even later in the Middle

Ages, in the time of Thomas Aquinas, a pivotal inclusion and exclusion in the term took

place. Activities related to the necessary and the useful were included under the Vita

Activa, while contemplation (the philosopher’s peculiar way of life) was excluded from

the Vita Activa and it was given a special term of its own: Vita Contemplativa. Indeed,

Arendt points out that Vita Activa is synonymous, not with the Bios Politikos, but with

the Greek a-skholia (unquiet), which denoted all the ways of “noisy” life that absolutely

contradicted the quiet way of life of the philosopher (skhole).20

In fact, Hannah Arendt builds her concept of Vita Activa on the logical broad

division of human activities, which perfectly matches the conceptualization of the late

Middle Ages, as well. Additionally, she develops and refines the concept by correlating

each activity with the “basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to

man.”21

According to Arendt, Vita Activa is divided into three types: labor which relates

to life, work which relates to world, and action which relates to plurality.

18

Ibid., 12. 19

Ibid., 23. 20

Ibid., 15. 21

Ibid., 7.

15

The Arendtian typology is quite different form the Aristotelian typology. Aristotle

does not create sharp distinctions between labor and work; however, Arendt does create a

very sharp distinction between these two categories. The basis of Aristotle’s typology is

the noble (beautiful) on the one hand versus the non-noble (useful and necessary) on the

other hand. The basis of Arendt’s typology is the human condition by which life on earth

has been given to man. Since Arendt identifies three human conditions for the human

existence on earth: life, world and plurality, there must be three human activities

correlating with the three human conditions. Arendt explains that:

Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human

body…the human condition of labor is life itself. Work is the activity which

corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence …work provides an

“artificial” world of things, distinctly different from all natural surroundings.

Within its borders each individual life is housed, while this world itself is meant

to outlast and transcend them all. The human condition of work is worldliness.

Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the

intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of

plurality.22

Arendt also incorporates the Ancient Greeks’ meanings into her concept of action in

particular, and into her concept of Vita Activa more generally. For the Ancient Greeks as

well as for Arendt, labor which is entangled with cyclical and never-ending bodily needs

and work which is busy with fabrication and making artifacts, are not activities that

realize human freedom. The only activity that does realize freedom is the human activity

of Action, which is mainly conditioned by plurality. Neither labor nor work requires the

company of others. They might need to be facilitated by cooperation or by organization,

22

Ibid.

16

but they are certainly not conditioned by continuous interaction with equal peers. Only

action involves human-to-human interaction without a medium in between.

The Arendtian theory of Vita Activa is very well received by the contemporary

political theorists; however, her trilogy: labor, work and action was criticized and debated

by scholars. For instance, Shiraz Dossa considers the order of the activities as quite

arbitrary:

The fundamental activities in the vita activa… are not related to each other in any

particular order of priority intrinsic to the vita activa itself. The order of

arrangement and the importance assigned to each activity depends wholly on the

judgement of the theorist assessing the vita activa.23

Although Dossa’s criticism is considerable, I disagree with him on his judgment that

Arendt is trying to put activities into an order or a hierarchy. In my opinion, Arendt’s

main concern is to locate activities, not to order them as the Aristotelian perspective

suggests. Her method in determining these activities is mainly logical and descriptive.24

We can easily agree with her that an artisan, for instance, finishes his/her craft in

isolation and exhibits it in the public realm. Similarly, we can agree with her that the

work of building a house has a certain beginning and a predictable end; the activity of

eating to maintain our bodies has no end until the moment of our death. Selya Benhabib

makes the same remark about Arendt’s concern with the location of human activities.

Benhabib also argues that “each type of human activity has a proper ‘place’ in which it

can be carried out. Labor, she [Arendt] claims, does not belong in the public realm,

23

Dossa, The Public Realm and the Public Self, 51. 24

Some literature studies Arendt as a phenomenologist, such as Moran, "Hannah Arendt: the

phenomenology of the public sphere." and Marder, “Natality, Event, Revolution: The Political

Phenomenology of Hannah Arendt.”

17

whereas work, although often carried out in solitude, must display its product in

public.”25

Benhabib, admits that the sharp distinction between the three types of activities is

quite problematic. She even cites scholars who “have sought to show that her art of

making distinctions often obscured rather than illuminated the phenomena at hand.”26

In

an attempt to solve the problem, Benhabib suggests that this criticism of Arendt does not

take into account the more fundamental level that offers a basis for Arendt’s distinction,

which is her philosophical methodology of “phenomenological essentialism.”27

Benhabib

continues to clarify that this method leads usually to conflation between conceptual

distinctions and ontological analyses on one hand and social process and historical

descriptions on the other hand.28

According to Benhabib’s suggestion, the problematic

dimension of Arendt’s theory of Vita Activa is not because of her conceptual sharp

distinction of the three activities, but the problem arises from our confusion regarding the

identification of the level on which Arendt is operating on.29

Nevertheless, one could criticize Arendt easily by saying that the distinctions

simplify the human activity, which might tempt the reader to reduce every particular

activity into one single type: labor, work or action. Benhabib points out that this remark

has been made as a standard objection by scholars, who claim that “any complex human

activity, from factory work, to writing a book, to making a meal, cannot simply be seen

25

Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, 124. 26

Ibid., 123. Benhabib mentiones Hannah Pitkin, Jurgen Habermas, and Richard Bernstein. 27

Ibid. 28

Ibid., 124. 29

Ibid.

18

as an exemplar of a single action type.”30

Benhabib continues to back up this objection by

a number of examples that illustrate how complex the human activities are and how

impossible it is to reduce every human particular activity into a single type of activity.

She illustrates:

Industrial factory work, for example, is not just labor…depending on the nature of

the social relations of power on the shop floor, and between union and

management, there are usually complex dimensions of social interaction involved.

By building ten rather than fifteen chips per hour, workers may be engaging in a

slowdown of production. Their activity in this case would not be merely…labor;

it would also be political activity. Equally, writing a poem may appear as a case

of pure work in Arendtian terms…but if you are writing a poem as your weekly

addition to a comic strip that you despise, far from being satisfying work, this

activity may bear all the marks of drudgery alienated, industrial wage labor.

Finally, making a meal, the quintessential example of the repetitive, ephemeral

labor that serves the needs of the body in Arendt’s view, may be an expressive act

for a gourmet chef, just as it may be an act of love among two or more

individuals.31

I argue that this objection, while obvious and agreeable, is based on mixing the concept

of the type or the category with the concept of the particular or the real. The three types

of Vita Activa are categories, yet they are not real particulars. In other words, the three

types are analytical, not substantial. If the three types were real, there will be no need for

analyzing or classifying the human activities; neither there will be a justification for

Arendt’s main question of the human condition, which is to think what we are doing.

Based on this remark of the difference between the type and the particular, every

particular activity done in our very complex social and political context, such as writing a

book or making a meal, could not be wholly subsumed under one single category or type

of Vita Activa.

30

Ibid, 131. 31

Ibid., 131.

19

In everyday life, we do not normally go straightforward in a linear way from

doing one type of activity into another type; this is very obvious. However, Arendt’s

typology allows us to be aware that there are up to three distinct types of activity

involved in every particular activity. I believe that accepting the typology of Vita Activa

and being aware of the three types involved explains and illuminates the complexity of

the phenomenon at hand; additionally, it helps us understand what we are doing, which is

the main concern of Arendt in the Human Condition.

Moreover, the correspondence of labor, work and action to the three dimensions

of human existence, which Arendt calls “conditions,” might help human beings not to

reduce their complex human existence into one dimension. For reducing one’s existence

into a single type of existence would have consequences in the form of losing the

meaning of one’s life, doing injustice to other people, or taking advantage of them. For

example, an individual who attempts to avoid labor and try to devote his life to action

entirely would turn into a parasite who lives at the expense of taking advantage of

someone else who is doing for him his labor and work. Similarly, an individual who is

forced to devote his/her life to labor only would turn into a means of sustenance of the

life of another group of people who might be devoted to either work and/or action. On a

contemporary societal level, taking Vita Activa as a pivotal concept in social justice

policies would help making sure that every individual/class/group in the society becomes

involved to some extent in the three activities, so his/her/its existence would not be

20

reduced into one aspect and would not be deprived from the complexity and the meaning

of human existence.32

II. A. 3. The Life and the World

Life is the human condition of labor, and plurality is the human condition of action, as

Arendt states.33

But people would not be able to live together in plurality unless they first

overcome the state of living amid nature. People could not found a body-politic according

to the principle of action while they are a part of nature, whose necessities deprive people

of their capacity to be free. People must distinguish themselves from mere life or nature

by making a world of their own; a world that is a product of their fabrication and which

can hold the prints of their existence or Dasein: of “being-there at a certain locality in

space and time,” in Heidegerian terms.34

The world is the man-made home amid the

wilderness of nature which is a home for the animal existence, but is not a home for

human existence. The things that the human beings fabricate in order to make earth a

32

While I was writing this part, I was following up the famine of Madaya, a syrian city under siege amid

the Syrian civil war. I contemplated the phenomenon from the perspective of Vita Activa and found that

while people in this small city are starving to death, i.e. lacking the human condition of labor; the main

reason which have lead into famine was not that they lacked food for the sustenance of their bodies.

However, the main reason was that there are two groups of people who are not acting together in order to

facilitate food transportation. Accordingly, the solution of the problem will be through action, not through

labor or work (such as collecting money for buying food for the starving people or making projects for food

production). Doing deeds such as mediating between the conflicting parties or acting by the means of

speech such as publishing, writing about Madaya to exert pressures on the parties will be the right activity

to do in this particular case.

You can find out about the case, here http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/09/middleeast/syria-madaya-

starvation/ 33

Arendt, The Human Condition, 7. 34

Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, 52.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/09/middleeast/syria-madaya-starvation/

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/09/middleeast/syria-madaya-starvation/

21

home for themselves are what ensures “stability and solidity without which it could not

be relied upon to house the unstable and mortal creature which is man.”35

Neither do the activities of labor nor work ensure the ability to make a home for

human beings, because both of them do not have the thing-character that permits

durability, stability and relative independence from men, who are in continuous flux into

and from the world. What ensures relative stability and the making of a home is rather the

activity of work.36

Labor ensures the mere biological existence of human beings and it is

caught in the never-ending biological cycles, which begins with birth and ends with

death. In other words, labor is like the motor power that ensures our continuous living so

we can perform other activities that distinguish us from nature.

Arendt explains that “the word ‘life’…follows a strictly linear movement whose

very motion …is driven by the motor of biological life which man shares with other

living things and which forever retains the cyclical movement of nature.”37

She also adds

that “the biological process in man…is part of the cyclical movement of nature and

therefore endlessly repetitive; all human activities which arise out of the necessity to cope

with them are bound to the recurring cycles of nature and have in themselves no

beginning and no end.”38

Arendt argues that founding a body-politic, which is mainly achieved via people

acting together, is not possible until people get themselves out of the state of nature

35


Ibid., 137. Because Arendt insists that the world has a thing character, I would say, that according to this

understanding, institutions (such as marriage) and laws are not subsumed under the activity of work and its

human condition of worldness. It would rather be subsumed under action and its human condition of

plurality because it involves human to human interaction directly. 37

Ibid., 97. 38

Ibid., 98.

22

towards the state of culture.39

Hence, human beings could not jump directly from

labor/the state of nature/the mere life into action/founding a body-politic. They should

first separate themselves from nature by making their home out of the artifacts of their

hands, i.e. making the world. Action could not take place until there is a human habitat

that functions as its scene and medium. On the other hand, the thing-character of the

world and the durability of the things that human beings make by their hand is the source

or the basis of the objectivity of the world against the subjectivity of the makers. Arendt

illustrates the difference between the objectivity of the world and the eternal movement

of nature as follows:

Against the subjectivity of men stands the objectivity of the man-made world

rather than the sublime indifference of the untouched nature, whose

overwhelming elementary force, on the contrary, will compel them to swing

relentlessly in the circle of their own biological movement…only we who have

erected the objectivity of a world of our own from what nature gives us, who have

built it into the environment of nature so that we are protected from her, can look

upon nature as something “objective” without a world between man and nature,

there is eternal movement, but not objectivity.40

The world, which is durable, objective, and relatively stable, serves a double function:

getting human beings out of the cyclical natural life and providing a medium for actions

to be laid over its relative stability: “this web [the fragile web of human relationships]

overlays the tangible objects of public world with a multiplicity of interpretations

emanating from different agents.”41

39

Ibid., 8,9. She said “action, in so far as it engages in founding and preserving political bodies, creates the

condition for remembrance, that is, for history.” 40

Ibid., 137. 41

Barash, “The Political Dimension of the Public World…,” 263.

23

II. A. 4. Natality and Mortality

The three human conditions, which render life on earth possible for human existence:

life, world and plurality, are further rooted in a more existential fundamental level, which

is the condition of both natality and mortality. Arendt states that “all activities and their

corresponding conditions are connected with the most general condition of human

existence: birth and death, natality and mortality.”42

Both natality and mortality are two

dimensions and conditions of human existence.

Arendt, in her analysis of the relation between philosophy and politics, claims that

philosophers usually emphasize the dimension of mortality over the dimension of

natality. They do not even give attention to the fact that we are natals as much as we are

mortals; i.e. we can be defined as natal beings as we are defined as mortal beings as

well.43

Also, the fact of death is overvalued in philosophy over the fact of birth, in

Arendt’s estimation. This attitude of philosophers towards life and death, which is an

attitude of ignoring birth and liking death, started with Plato’s Phaedo, where he decides

that “the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for

dying and death.”44

Arendt comments on the philosopher’s attitude towards dying by

saying that “death, being the separation of body and soul, is welcome to him; he is

somehow in love with death, because the body, with all its demands, constantly interrupts

the soul’s pursuits.”45

Because of this stance of philosophers, generally, Arendt remarks

42


Arendt, The Life of the Mind/ Willing, 109. 44

Plato, Phaedo, 101. Moreover, Arendt devotes the fourth session of Lectures on Kant’s Philosophy for

the discussion of the relation of Philosophy to Politics. See: Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political

Philosophy, 22-27. 45

Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, 22.

24

that “the true philosopher does not accept the conditions under which life has been given

to man.”46

In other words, Arendt wants to say that the philosopher does not accept the

condition of natality; and hence, he values death over life.

The tradition of valuing death over life or not accepting all human conditions of

existence, which started with Plato, and never stopped in the philosophical tradition, was

not challenged until Arendt came up with the notion of natality as a no less important

category than the category of mortality. She theorizes it as the more important ontological

category of labor, work and action. She said:

labor and work, as well as, action, are also rooted in natality in so far as they have

the task to provide and preserve the world for, to foresee and reckon with, the

constant influx of newcomers who are born into the world as stranger.47

According to Arendt, the most important activity that is connected to natality is the

activity of action because, as we will see later, she equates action with beginning, which

is rooted in the human condition of natality. In the following passage of Arendt, she will

not only clarify how the category of natality is the central category of the political action,

but also she will decide on the essential difference between political and metaphysical

thought. She states that:

Action has the closest connection with the human condition of natality; the new

beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the

newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting.

In this sense of initiative, an element of action, and therefore of natality is

inherent in all human activities. Moreover, since action is the political activity par

excellence, natality, and not mortality, may be the central category of the political

as distinguished form metaphysical, thought.48

46

Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, 22. 47


Ibid.

25

Natality and mortality means, in another way, that we are just visitors on the earth. We

are born and become caught up in the cyclical biological processes of life that ensures our

continuous existence. Then, if we do not do anything that transcend this necessary and

natural cycle, we will live and die like animals.49

We will leave the universe with no trace

behind us that tells we have lived before on earth. We will disappear without a proof of

our Dasein, of being-there at a particular space and time. This reflection upon the

condition of natality and mortality, of being mere visitors on the earth, is very

frightening. Even if we find salvation in religion and do good deeds as religions always

prescribe to their followers, how can these good deeds be ascribed to its doers, so that

they can be remembered? How can they be saved from the “natural ruin of time”50

and be

saved from its fleeting character? Is there any possibility for a mortal being to became,

even relatively, an immortal being?

II. A. 5. Immortality and the Common

Human beings in ancient times seemed aware of the apparent fact that they were the only

mortals in an immortal and everlasting universe. We “move along rectilinear line in a

universe where everything…moves in a cyclical order.”51

The awareness of the fact that

the life of an individual is a linear path between birth and death became overwhelming

very early. The question of how can the existence of mortal human beings, not as species,

but as distinct individuals, be transformed into immortal existence, became very

49

Ibid., 19. 50

Ibid., 55. 51

Ibid., 19.

26

concerning. How can mortals be immortals who can endure in time and enjoy deathless

life?52

The Greek’s solution to this human concern is the Aristotelian remark that there is

a “possibility for immortalizing” for the realm of human affairs.53

He argues in his Ethics

that “…one should not follow those who advise us to think human thoughts since we are

human, and mortal thoughts, since we are mortal, but as far as possible one ought to be

immortal…”54

Arendt adds that the insistence on immortality occurs very often in

Aristotle’s political writings.55

The possibility of immortality and of creating lasting and

enduring existence, which saves the human existence from its futility, would be the

existential spring and the motivation for creating the common or the public realm where

people can constitute reality to their existence. They can give their futile and originally

mortal existence an immortal dimension by appearing as actors whose words can be

heard and whose deeds can be seen. They can also exhibit the artifacts they made and

they can be known as the makers of beautiful and useful things that could potentially last

after they have died.

Therefore, we can conclude with Arendt that, immortality is the center and the

spring of Vita Activa.56

We can understand from her implications that “without this

transcendence into a potential earthly immortality, no politics, strictly speaking, no

52

Ibid., 18. 53

Ibid., 56. 54

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1177b32-35. Arendt quotes from a translation other than the translation

I have quoted from: “Considering human affairs, one must not…consider man as he is and not consider

what is mortal in mortal things, but think about them [only] to the extent that they have the possibility of

immortalizing.” Arendt, The Human Condition, 56. 55


Ibid., 21.

27

common world and no public realm, is possible.”57

According to the private and the

public domains of Vita Activa, Arendt clarifies that the term “public” signifies two related

yet not identical phenomena. The first meaning of the public is almost identical with the

meaning of appearance and reality. Arendt defines it as “everything that appears in public

[that] can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest possible publicity. For us,

appearance…constitutes reality.”58

The second meaning is almost identical to the

meaning of the world that is constituted from our fabrication and the human affairs

altogether. She defines it as follows:

The term ‘public’ signifies the world itself, in so far as it is common to all of us

and distinguished from our privately own place in it. This world, however, is not

identical with the earth or with nature, as the limited space for the movement of

men and the general condition of organic life, it is related, rather, to the human

artifact, the fabrication of human hands, as well as, to affairs which go on among

those who inhabit the man-made world together.59

Having explained the ontological roots of Vita Activa and the existential origin of the

common, I shall explain how the human condition of plurality could be manifested in a

public realm, in order for action to take place. In other words, how can a plurality of

people exist in the public realm, so that they can act together in an organized way? I

shall, as well, clarify how action and the human condition of plurality are inherent only in

freedom.

57

Ibid., 55. 58

Ibid., 50. 59

Ibid., 52.

28

II. B. The Political, Action and Freedom

It would be very difficult to discuss separately the three categories of the political, the

action, and freedom, because none of them could exist without the other. Arendt argues

that action and freedom are the only main constituents of the concept of the political. The

reason for the very existence of the body-politic is freedom; and freedom in turn has its

realization in action. Arendt maintains that “the raison d’être of politics is freedom, and

its field of experience is action.”60

Therefore, Arendt, like the Ancient Greeks, has a very

definite and relatively narrow meaning of the political. From the three cardinal human

activities –labor, work and action– action alone is what counts as a political activity.

Action in turn is the only human activity characterized by freedom. Arendt claims that

“freedom…is actually the reason that men live together in political organization at all.

Without it, political life as such would be meaningless.”61

Consequently, in the coming

discussion, one should bear in mind that the Arendtian concept of politics takes its

connotations from the Ancient Greek experience, which has almost the inverted meaning

of what we take to be the political in modern times.62

II. B. 1. The Human Condition of Plurality and the Public Realm

Action is determined by the human condition of plurality. No human being could act

alone, as Arendt clarifies. She states that “action… is never possible in solitude or

60

Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” 146. 61

Ibid. 62

Arendt considers the modern state as a gigantic household that is necessary to keep life, but not by any

means a body-politic for the freedom of its members. Arendt, The Human Condition, 28. She believes that

what is left for the political in the modern age is the field of International Relation.

29

isolation; one man alone needs, at the very least, the help of others to carry through

whatever his enterprise may be.”63

For action to take place, agents should act in the

“public realm,” which is an organized space for human interaction to take place. Arendt

stresses that although the other two human conditions, life and world, have some relation

to politics, the human condition of “plurality is specifically the condition –not only the

conditio sine qua non, but the conditio per quam—of all political life.”64

Not every human community secures a public realm for action and freedom.

Hence, not every community counts as a body-politic, and not every human community

knows that the concept of the political is associated solely with freedom. For example,

tribes and dynasties are not politically organized communities; thus, although they are

communities, they do not count for body-politic. The principle of the formation of tribes

and dynasties is mainly labor, the need to preserve life and its necessities. Arendt

explains that “where men live together but do not form a body-politic,… the factors

ruling their actions and conduct are not freedom but the necessities of life and concern of

its preservation.”65

Interaction between its members does not count for action and thus for

freedom because these communities do not organize public space in which freedom could

have an appearance. In other words, if a collective of human beings needs to preserve its

life and existence only, there will be no need for founding a body-politic.

The Greek polis, which came into existence before the Socratic school of

philosophy was born, is an exemplar for a body-politic that is built upon and is organized

63

Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, 59. 64

Arendt, The Human Condition, 7. sine qua non: an essential element or condition; prerequisite. Conditio

per quam: the condition whereby 65

Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” 148.

30

according to the principles of freedom and the public realm. As the human activities of

labor, work and action were differentiated and distinguished in the Greek polis, the

location of these activities was demarcated as well. Life was divided into the household

and the polis, or the private and the public realms.66

All activities of labor were taken care

of in the household or the private realm; and all activities of Action took place in the

polis or the public realm. Therefore, a Greek citizen had to traverse the sharp distinction

between the public and the private realms every day. Arendt asserts this division and

distinction because it is decisive in understanding the Greek conception of freedom and

politics. She elaborates:

At the root of Greek political consciousness we find an unequalled clarity and

articulateness in drawing this distinction. No activity that served only the purpose

of making a living, of sustaining only the life process, was permitted to enter the

political realm, and this at the grave risk of abandoning trade and manufacture to

the industriousness of slaves and foreigners.67

Hence, freedom, solely, is the only justification for founding a polis and creating a public

realm sterile from the activities of labor and work and devoted to human-to-human

interaction. Arendt points out that this very character of the polis, being founded

according to the principle of freedom, was reflected in the political philosophies of Plato

and Aristotle, even though the description of both of these suggests that the borderline

between the household and the polis was infrequently blurred. For instance, Plato “began

to draw his examples and illustrations for the polis from everyday experiences in private

life.”68

On the other hand, Aristotle “tentatively assumes that at least the historical origin

66


Ibid., 37. 68

Ibid.

31

of the polis must be connected with the necessities of life and that only its content or

inherit aim (telos) transcends life in the “good life.”69

The crucial differences between the household and the polis, which are

noteworthy for its inherent relation to the concept of freedom, includes the type of human

activities performed in each, which I have discussed, and the type of interaction between

the members of each. In the household, everything is done by a command from the

master and by the obedience of slaves and women to assure maintaining and sustaining

necessary needs for the members of the household. In other words, the type of interaction

in the private realm is rulership or governance whose main principle is command and

obedience. Rulership gave rise to an inequality and a hierarchy in the household with the

master/free man at the top and the slave/unfree man at the bottom. Moreover, rulership

justified using coercion and violence in order to preserve necessities.70

Arendt explains

that “because all human beings are subject to necessity, they are entitled to violence

toward others; violence is the pre-political act of liberating oneself from the necessity of

life.”71

Because of rulership, governing by command and obedience, which entails

violence, the household was by definition not a space for realizing freedom. Human

interaction in the polis was completely opposed to the one in the household. The main

principle of interaction was not command and obedience between unequals, but action by

word and deed between equals. Persuasion by word and deed in the polis pre-empted the

69

Ibid. Arendt deals with the political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle as opposing philosophies to polis,

not representative to it. However, the character of polis is still reflected. She said “Our philosophical

tradition of political thought, beginning with Parmenides and Plato, was founded explicitly in opposition to

this polis and its citizenship. The way of life chosen by the philosopher was understood in opposition to the

(Bios Bolitikos), the political way of life” Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” 158. 70

Arendt, The Human Condition, 28-37. 71

Ibid., 31.

32

coercion of command. The polis was the location where equal citizens realize their

freedom in action, i.e. in speech and deed, “…to be free meant both not to be subject to

the necessity of life or to the command of another and not to be in command oneself. It

meant neither to rule nor to be ruled.”72

The household and the polis share the similarity of being conditions and

requirements of freedom for equal fellows. The household/ private realm liberates the

free man from the necessities of life; and the polis/the public realm provides him with an

organized space for the communication and interaction with equal fellow men by words

and deeds. Arendt argues that:

… in order to be free, man must have liberated himself from the necessities of

life. But the status of freedom did not follow automatically upon the act of

liberation. Freedom, needed, in addition to liberation, the company of other men

who were in the same state, and it needed a common public space to meet them-a

politically organized world, in other words, into which each of the free men could

insert himself by word and deed.73

The way the Greeks organized their space of existence, their body-politic, helps

us to understand that in the Greek case, freedom is related to how they understood their

relation to the space they inhabited. Freedom was a state of a body whose ability to move

should be guaranteed and facilitated, i.e. by protecting it from being enforced by

command and from being coerced by its own needs of preservation. Arendt states that

“freedom was understood to be the free man’s status, which enabled him to move, to get

away from home, to go out into the world and meet other people in deed and word.”74

It

72

Ibid., 32. Arendt cited Herodotus for this quote “neither to rule nor to be ruled” which was said by

Otanes who was a defender of Greek equality. 73


Ibid.

33

is also obvious that freedom is not possible for everyone in the polis. The freedom of

some, the slaves and women, is sacrificed for the freedom of others, the freemen or the

citizens in the Greek conception.

II. B. 2. Action and Freedom

Action is the field of the experience of freedom, as Arendt proves. For a freeman to

realize his freedom, he should be an agent among other equal and distinct agents. Action

has two modes or two forms in the Greek polis: deeds (acts) or words (speech). Action

has no end. Nevertheless, it has a result in the form of a story that could be narrated and

remembered. Ultimately, the story is weaved in history, the storybook of the human

mankind. Although action has no thing-character for action does not end in an ultimate

end product as work does, it certainly has an inter-subjective or “subjective in-between”75

reality that has an appearance insofar as the words are heard and the deeds are seen.

Consequently, freedom, because it is no more than the ability to act, would have both an

appearance and a reality.76

Arendt clarifies that “the subjective in-between is not tangible

… but … this in-between is no less real than the world of things we visibly have in

common.”77

Arendt argues that no form of communication needs speech more than action.

Every other human interaction could be mediated with a minimum of language; even sign

75

Arendt used the term “subjective in-between” for what we call “inter-subjective” 76


Ibid.

34

language could suffice to get labor or work done.78

On the other hand, speech is

indispensable for action, not to mention that speech itself is already an action. Most

conspicuously, “finding [and uttering] the right word at the right moment, quite apart

from the information or communication they may convey, is action.”79

Therefore, in the

Greek polis, speech and action were conceived as “coeval and equal, of the same rank

and the same kind.”80

Beside the inherent character of action in speech, acting together

would not be possible without self-disclosure. Speech lets us know who we are and lets

other fellows know who we are. Without disclosing ourselves and answering the question

“who we are,” we would not be able to act together because action happens in-between

distinct disclosed agents who have appearances.81

Even though agents in the public realm

are equal, they are distinct and different and “…speech corresponds to the fact of

distinctness and is the actualization of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living

as a distinct and unique being among equals.”82

If speech is correlated with the human condition of distinct plurality, action is

correlated with the human condition of natality.83

Arendt considers natality, not mortality,

as “the central category of the political.”84

As natals, newcomers born into the world,

they need to disclose who they are and insert themselves in the world by word and deed.

Arendt calls the agent’s insertion into the world a second birth.85

What is common

78

Ibid., 179. 79

Ibid., 26. 80

Ibid. 81

Whatever is occult and has no appearance, is unpolitical by definition for Arendt. 82

Ibid., 178. 83

Ibid. 84

Ibid., 9. 85

Ibid., 176, 178.

35

between biological and political birth is the fact of beginning. Birth, by definition, is a

beginning, whether it’s a beginning in nature (the biological) or a beginning in the world

(the political). This is what Arendt concludes from the etymological analysis of the Greek

language, which she takes as self-interpreting for the practical political experiences of the

Greeks.

According to Arendt, there were two different, but inter-related, words for “to

act” in the Greek language: archein and prattein. Archein means “to begin,” “to lead,”

and eventually “to rule,” while prattein means “to pass through,” “to achieve,” “to

finish.” In Latin, these words were rendered respectively as “agere,” which means to set

something in motion, and “gerere,” which means the enduring and supporting

continuation of past acts. 86

The twofold meaning of “to act” as related to politics was

interpreted by Arendt in the following passage:

In both instances, action occurs in two different stages; the first stage is a

beginning by which something new comes into the world. The Greek word…

which covers beginning, leading, ruling, that is, the outstanding qualities of the

free man, bears witness to an experience in which being free and the capacity to

begin something new coincided. Freedom, as we would say today, was

experienced in spontaneity. The manifold meaning …indicates the following:

only those could begin something new who were already rulers (i.e. household

heads who ruled over slaves and family) and had thus liberated themselves from

the necessities of life for enterprises in distant lands or citizenship in the polis; in

either case, they no longer ruled, but were rulers among rulers, moving among

their peers, whose help they enlisted as leaders in order to begin something new,

to start a new enterprise; for only with the help of others could the…. ruler,

beginner and leader, really act,… carry through whatever he had started to do.87

86

Ibid., 177,189. and Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” 165-166. 87

Ibid., 166.

36

The achievement or the finishing, indicated by the second meaning of the word, is by no

means an end product or a thing. The action has no end, but it is an end in itself.88

Having

no end, action, by definition, is fleeting in character.89

Speech and deeds could fly away

with no proof that they had existed sometime in the past. The fleeting character of action

requires the constant presence of others, the witnesses, who would testify, recognize and

then narrate the story of the great deeds and words.90

Story preserves actions from losing

their reality, and bears witness that, one day, they happened and were heard in words and

seen in deeds.

Unprecedented actions would give rise to unprecedented happenings, to events

which challenge all expectations based on causality and present themselves in the guise

of miracle.91

Being able to act, to begin, to cause something new to happen that was

unprecedented before, to challenge the laws of causality and to begin a causality of ones’

own is Freedom. Thus, freedom in its political origin was mainly constituted in the I-

can.92

In the ability to utter words and to perform deeds, this might give rise to an event

and would deserve to be told in a story. Freedom is constituted in the ability of the Agent.

If I can, I am free; if I cannot, I am not free. Arendt asserts that:

…this is the realm [public realm] where freedom is a worldly reality, tangible in

words which can be heard, in deeds which can be seen, and in events which are

talked about, remembered and turned into stories before they are finally

incorporated into the great story book of human history.93

88

Arendt, The Life of the Mind/ Willing, 60. Arendt refers to Aristotle who says “for good action is an end”

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1139 b1-4. 89


Arendt, The Human Condition, 184-7. 91


I-can is an Arendtian expression which denotes the ability/movement of the Agent to act with others. 93

Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” 154-5.

37

In addition, Arendt believes that unpredictability is an inherent character in action; hence,

the actor should free himself from intentions and motivations as well as from aims and

consequences; otherwise, he would be implementing a plan, which has an end (his aim)

and he will not be acting with others, but he will be using them as means for his end.

Kohn comments on this insight by saying that “if we knew what we were doing when we

act we would not be free but enacting or unfolding a plan.”94

II. C. Time and the Faculty of Choice

Arendt has a strong argument that “freedom as related to politics is not a phenomenon of

the will.”95

Greeks did not discover the faculty of the Will that we usually conceive, in

the modern age, as a spring of action.96

Action was not subjective in the Greek

experience, but inter-subjective, represented in words and acts that networked the agents

together. The point that might be perplexing here, as pointed out by Arendt, is that the

Greeks experienced voluntary and involuntary acts as well as intended and unintended

acts. She asks the question in this form: “How Greek philosophy dealt with phenomena

and data of human experience that our post-classical ‘conventions’ have been accustomed

to ascribe to the will as the mainspring of action?”97

Arendt, then, turned to Aristotle

94

Kohn, “Freedom: The Priority of the Political,” 123. 95


Arendt wrote the history of the faculty of Will in The Life of the Mind/Willing in which she asserted that

Greeks did not know the faculty of Will, however, she considered the faculty of choice as a forerunner for

the faculty of Will. She also refers to Hobbes and Gilson that both of them were aware that Greeks did not

know the faculty of Will. Arendt, The Life of the Mind/ Willing, 16. 97

Arendt, The Life of the Mind/ Willing, 57.

38

because he recognized “the lacuna in Greek language and thought regarding the faculty

of will” as no word existed for the faculty of Will.98

Arendt explains that volition is different from willing. Willing is directed towards

the future, and thus towards projects that have not yet existed. However, volition occurs

between two or more existing objects at hand.99

The faculty that makes volition possible

is a faculty of choice, not a faculty of willing. It is practical reason or proairesis, as

Aristotle conceptualized.100

The faculty of Choice is mainly concerned with means, not with ends, since the

end is already designated. For the Greeks, the end of the Agent was eudaimonia or

happiness, which no one directly chooses, but rather pursues through chosen means.

Arendt interprets the question of ends and choice by the Greeks as follows: “Nobody

deliberates and chooses health or happiness as his aim, though we may think about them;

ends are inherent in human nature and the same for all.”101

The faculty of choice “decides

between things equally possible and given to us, as it were, in statu nascendi as mere

potentialities.”102

Choice has no capacity to create a new possibility; it is a mere arbiter

between several possibilities.103

The reason Arendt refers to for which the Greeks did not discover the faculty of

Will is their concept of time. Will is an organ of the future; and future is plausible only if

the time is conceived as a rectilinear line that has a definite beginning and a definite end.

98

Ibid., 15, 57. 99

Ibid., 13,14. 100

Ibid., 55 101

Ibid., 62. 102

Ibid., 29. 103

Ibid., 62.

39

The Greeks did not have such a concept of time because they conceived the universe as

immortal having neither a beginning nor an end. The mathematical form which has no

beginning and no end is the circle. Therefore, their time concept was cyclical. Moreover,

Arendt argues that the emergence of the cyclical time concept was inevitable on the

background of discovering an everlasting being, birthless and deathless.104

Everything for

the Greeks was revolving, happening again and again in a circular manner. Even “Events

and doxai ás, they occur among men, revolve not only once or a few times but infinitely

often.”105

In fact, the Aristotelian categories of potentiality and actuality are good

representatives of the cyclical time concept. The potential exists in a dormant form,

which needs a cause to bring it into being. Potentiality is one of the causes of everything

real and the future is always a consequence of the past, as Arendt notes.106

In the frame of

the cyclical time concept, nothing completely new would be introduced into the world.

To recapitulate, Arendt argues that the political freedom was experienced in the

Greek polis as an objective quality of the body and an inter-subjective reality in the polis

of which the recognized chief units are the equal citizens.107

Freedom has both an

appearance and a reality in the body-politic or the polis; however, it was not a

manifestation of the faculty of Will, for the Greeks did not discover such a faculty.

Freedom, in the polis, was an experience associated with the ability to act with other

equal fellows. In other words, freedom was a phenomenon of the I-can, not the I-will.

104

Ibid., 17. 105

Ibid. Arendt refers to Aristotle, Meteorologica, 339 b 27 106

Ibid., 15. 107

Ibid., 19.

40

III PHILOSOPHICAL FREEDOM

III. A. The Concept of Time and the Concept of Inner Life

Arendt insists that the human mind could acquire and develop new faculties throughout

the course of history.108

She dates the discovery of the faculty of the Will to the human

experience of religious conversion, specifically the conversion of Paul in the first century

A.D. as well as the rise of “popular philosophy” by which she refers to Stoicism and the

related doctrines. Both Christianity and Stoicism led eventually to the discovery of an

inner life of man, where he could experience an internal freedom in solitude. That is, an

experience of freedom whose existence is testified only by the one who experiences it.

Christianity, on the other hand, reversed the relation between man and the world.

The world is no longer everlasting and immortal. Man, as well, is no longer a mortal

being whose life is transient in the world as the Ancient Greek world-view suggested.109

In Christianity, the relation is reversed and an authentic future could be hoped for or

feared from “you who have believed that men die but that the world is everlasting need

only turnabout, to a faith that the world comes to an end but that you yourself will have

an everlasting life.”110

Because of this inversion, an inner life for man was possible and

the question of faith, rightness and struggle to master the inner life became relevant.

A new concept of time, entailed in the new Christian world-view is a second

decisive factor that contributes to the discovery of the faculty of will. Elisabeth Young-

Bruehl agrees also on the decisiveness of the concept of time for the discovery of the

108

Ibid., 56. She contends that “the mind of man, its concerns and its faculties, is affected both by changes

in the world, whose meaningfulness it examines, and , perhaps even more decisively, by its own activities” 109

The Greek world view where mortality and immortality were central categories was discussed in the

subsections of natality and mortality and immortality and the common. 110

Ibid., 66.

41

Will. She explains that “the lack of a notion of will among the Greeks and the

achievement of such a notion among the Christians were tied to time concepts.”111

According to the Christian world-view, the universe is created; hence, it has an

absolute beginning. The universe will come to an absolute definite end as well. Since the

mathematical form that has a beginning and an end is the line, the new concept of time

that corresponds to a view of the World, with a beginning and an end, is the rectilinear

time concept. Therefore, the ancient cyclical concept of time that was congruous with the

circular movement of life and nature could be preempted with the rectilinear time

concept. Not only the creed or the faith of creation determines a beginning and end for

the world, but also “the story that begins with Adam’s expulsion from Paradise and ends

with Christ’s death and resurrection is a story of a unique, unrepeatable event.”112

Arendt notices that the story’s events could not be repeated again and again in a

circular manner: “the story’s sequence presupposes a rectilinear time concept; it has a

definite beginning, a turning point -the year one of our calendar- and a definite end.”113

The concept of future and the possible events that might come with it changes

accordingly from an inauthentic event that already existed in the past in the status of

potentiality (using the circular time concept) to an authentic tense, which brings about

events that have never existed in the past (using the rectilinear time concept). Such new

concept of time hardly touched the secular events in the medieval period, as Arendt

observes.114

Nevertheless, it was indispensable for the discovery of the faculty of will for

111

Young-Bruehl, “Reflections on Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind,” 157. 112


Ibid. 114

Ibid.

42

the Will is “our mental organ for the future.”115

Indeed, without the possibility of

authentic future that could carry noble events, there would be no need for a faculty of

Will. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl also observes this relation by stating that:

…when thinkers emphasize the past within the context of a cyclical time theory -

that is, when future is seen as an actualization or consequence of the past- no

mental “organ” for the future, no Will, is posited; but, on the other hand, when

they emphasize the future within the context of a rectilinear time theory-that is,

when unique events are brought to be possible- an “organ” for the future is

considered essential.116

Given the new possibility of an internal life and the new possibility of a genuine future

that could be a harbinger of novel events, a new experience of freedom ascribed to the

Will was possible: the freedom of the Will, or philosophical freedom.117

Neither

philosophical nor political freedom were born in the philosophical tradition; however, the

fact that a mental faculty had been discovered and with which freedom could be ascribed

to, in addition to its being experienced in solitude, made the freedom of the Will eligible

to be subjected to philosophical speculation.

Political freedom, on the other hand, was not eligible for philosophical

investigation, for it is conditioned by plurality. Arendt upholds that the main feature of

philosophy, in its historical tradition, is its concern with man in his singularity, and not

his plurality. She argues that:

It lies in the nature of philosophy to deal with man in the singular, whereas

politics could not even be conceived of if men did not exist in the plural. Or to put

it another way: the experiences of the philosopher- insofar as he is a philosopher-

115

Ibid.,13, 18, 32. 116


The rectilinear time concept was an essential precedent and condition to the modern idea of progress; an

idea which is not conceivable without the concept of rectilinear time

43

are with solitude, while for man- insofar as he is political-solitude is an essential

but nevertheless marginal experience.118

Hence, philosophical freedom as an attempt to exercise freedom in singularity was a hope

of redemption for people, who were exempted from the elite class of citizens. Freedom in

plurality was not guaranteed for everyone, and is, as well, conditioned by the consent of

the multitude to grant and secure the freedom of the movement of the body.

III. B. The Discovery of the Will

Since the discovery of the Will is datable, Arendt’s method in tackling the faculty of Will

is historical. 119

Arendt dates the discovery of the Will to the Apostle Paul. She states that

“the Will and its necessary Freedom in all their complexity were first discovered by

Paul.”120

Concomitant with Paul’s conversion and preaching on behalf of Christianity,

Epictetus, who was a freed slave, was also able to discover the Will and its capacities

through a rather different experience with Stoicism.

After Paul and Epictetus raised the complexities of the Will, Augustine, the first

philosopher of the Will, as Arendt labels him, attempted to solve the problems of the Will

by transforming it into love. Eight centuries later, in the Middle Ages, Aquinas and Duns

Scotus were interested in contending over the problems of the Will, not in isolation, but

in its relation to the intellect. These contentions were the exact problem of free will,

118

The quote from a speech presented to the American Society of Political Scientists in 1954 entitled

“Concern with Politics in Recent European Philosophical Thought,” quoted from Barash, “The Political

Dimesion of the Public World,” 251. 119



44

which Arendt affirms. She elaborates that we should not be mistaken by the synonymous

discussions in relation to the problem of freedom, in the political sense.

Arendt abstracts two general historical human experiences that brought about the

Will and its alleged freedom. The first, is the human experience in demand of voluntary

submission to the Divine law; i.e. obedience vs. disobedience to the Divine law in

theological terms. Arendt extrapolates this fundamental statement as follows:

…it was the experience of an imperative demanding voluntary submission that led

to the discovery of the Will, and inherent in this experience was the wondrous fact

of a freedom that none of the ancient peoples-Greek, Roman, or Hebrew- had

been aware of, namely, that there is a faculty in man by virtue of which,

regardless of necessity and compulsion, he can say “Yes” or “No,” agree or

disagree with what is factually given, including his own self and his existences,

and that this faculty may determine what he is going to do.121

And the second experience is the experience whereby freedom becomes a problem; i.e.

“when men begin to doubt the coincidence of the Thou-shalt and the I-can…the question

arises: Are things that concern only me within my power.”122

Both of these experiences

are manifested in the experience of Apostle Paul.

III. B. 1. Paul and Epictetus

Paul noticed that law is hard to fulfill. Thus, while there is a will to fulfill the law, the real

ability of the agent for fulfilment is diminished.123

In other words, there is an “I cannot”

121

Ibid., 68 122

Ibid., 63. 123

Ibid., 55-73. Arendt relies on Bible in addressing Paul’s view, especially: Galatians, Corinthians, Luke,

Matthew, Romans. This observation of Paul, that the law could not be fulfilled might be related to his time

when he was a Jew. The law of Judaism was very hard to fulfil and to live according to its orders and

preventions. Quran preserved many of the legislations of Jews that is easy to recognize how hard they were.

45

regarding the commands of law even if the agent has the “I will.” In addition, the

voluntary submission required by the law from its followers implies that there is a

possibility of refusal to voluntary submission to the law, i.e. the will might will (submit

voluntarily to the law) or might nill (refuse to submit to the law). Arendt explains that

Paul discovered the two-in-one that Socrates had discovered previously.124

However,

while the Socratic two-in-one is in friendship and is indispensable for a solitary dialogue

or thinking, the two-in-one of Paul is problematic, because the split between the mental

willing and the real ability would incite a conflict between the I-will and the I-can, or the

I-will and the I-nill.

Paul does not see any possible solution to the conflict within the range of human

capacity, “so that even if the law is obeyed and fulfilled, there remains this inner

resistance.”125

Only divine grace can resolve the conflict and give peace to the Will.

Hence, for Paul, the Will is utterly impotent “because it hinders itself”126

and it requires

divine salvation.

Concomitantly, Epictetus’s philosophy was interested in making the freedom of

the slave possible. How could one be a slave in the world and still feel free? It seems also

So it is plausible that Paul’s insistence on “I cannot” was a solution to the problem faced by a Jew that he is

not able to submit completely to the Divine Law. 124

Arendt, The Life of the Mind/ Willing, 64. Arendt considers that thinking is not possible unless you think

with yourself, that is, thinking is an internal dialogue between me and myself. She thinks that Socrates

discovered that two-in-one that is indispensable for thinking. She also considers that the two-in-one is the

forerunner of consciousness. 125

Ibid., 69. 126

Ibid., 70.

46

that Epictetus was not troubled with the conflict of the demand of the submission to law,

but he was more concerned with the problem of inability in the outer world.127

Epictetus discovered that the mind could retain outward “impressions”; and, thus,

it could deal with the outside things as mere data of consciousness.128

For him, man has

no power over the outward world; yet, he is gifted with mental capacities that enable him

to represent the outward world in his own inwardness. This implies that man is able to

rule over himself and over what concerns him only.129

Epictetus continues to argue, as

Arendt explains, that reason teaches the will what is within the limit of will’s power and

what is outside of its power. Accordingly, the Will has the sovereign decision to

command itself to do only that which is within the scope of its power. It restricts itself to

exercise its sovereignty in inwardness only. When the will is entirely capable of

mastering and ruling the inwardness state, man will be indifferent and invulnerable to the

outside circumstances and miseries.

The status of limiting oneself to live in inwardness and to withdraw from the

outside world demands continuous training. This is for two reasons: first, “man lives his

ordinary life in the world as it is,” and second, “his inside itself is located within some

outside, a body that is not in his power but belongs to outside things.”130

Nonetheless,

despite the hardness of keeping this training in the face of the miseries of the outside

reality and the vulnerability of the human body, the man, who succeeds in training his

will to “will what happens anyhow” and to “will what is” and “thus never be at odds with

127

Sources of Arendt for extracting Epictetus’s Doctrine: Discourses, the Manual, and Fragments. 128

Arendt, The Life of the mind/Willing, 76. 129

Ibid., 78. 130

Ibid., 79.

47

outward things,”131

would achieve the status of invulnerability or atarxia. While Paul

concludes from his experience that the will is impotent, Epictetus concludes that the will

is omnipotent for its sovereignty over itself, because nothing could hinder the Will other

than itself and its capability to bracket reality.

III. B. 2. Unifying the Will

Augustine, the first philosopher of the Will, went beyond Apostle Paul and Epictetus. In

Arendt’s analysis of Augustine’s philosophy, she explains his claim in which he states

that the Will might will and might find no obstacle to realize its willing. Nevertheless, it

still might not be able to perform. “It is possible to will and, in the absence of any outside

hindrance still be unable to perform!”132

Thus, Augustine is critical of Stoicism. He

noticed that saying no to reality was not enough for tranquility.133

He also remarked that

the willed submissiveness regarding the Divine law presupposes a severe limitation on

the willing capacity itself. Even the creed of belief in “creation” exerts more limitation on

the willing capacity. In fact, “no created being can will against creation, for this would be

a will directed not only against a counter-will, but also against the very existence of the

willing or nilling subject.”134

For this extreme inability of the Will, Augustine is against

the Will’s omnipotence; and he claims that the Will needs redemption.

131

Ibid., 81. 132

Ibid., 87. Augustine’s writings that Arendt depended on in her account are the following: On the Trinity,

Confessions, On the Free Choice of the Will, Epistolae, On Grace and Free Will and the City of Go. 133

Ibid., 91. 134

Ibid.

48

Augustine demands that “a good man ought to conform his will to the divine will,

so that he wills what God wills.”135

In addition; he believes, like Paul and Epictetus, that

the Will is spilt and thus is in conflict with itself. This is attested by the very fact that the

Will always speaks in imperatives: “Thou shalt will.”136

It is in the nature of the Will to

command and to demand obedience. It is as well in its nature to be resisted.137

Augustine,

and Paul, seeks resolution to the conflict of the Will, but, Augustine seeks to resolve the

division by reuniting the divided will and by transforming it into Love.138

Although the

transformation remained mysterious, as Arendt states, she concludes “…he diagnoses the

ultimate unifying will that eventually decides a man’s conduct as Love.”139

III. B. 3. Who was willing to pay the price?

Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, who came eight centuries after Augustine, were not

interested in the Will per se and its own structure as an isolated faculty, but they were

interested in its relation to the intellect and whether it is of higher rank with respect to the

intellect.140

Thomas assembled all faculties: Will, Choice, Intellect and Reason in one system.

Arendt explains that he assembled the four faculties in the following manner: the two

apprehensive faculties (the Intellect and the Will) and the two appetitive faculties (the

135

Ibid., 92. This extreme fatalism is still playing an influential rule in the everyday life of many believers

who are fanatic in ascribing every human action to God directly! 136

Ibid., 94. 137

Ibid., 96. 138

Ibid., 104. 139

Ibid., 95. 140

Ibid., 117.Arendt’s main source of Aquinas is Summa Theologica; for Duns Scotus, she depends on two

books by Etienne Gislon, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy and The History of Christian Philosophy in the

Middle Ages.

49

Reason and the Choice) work together in harmony in one system and for an ultimate

universal end. In the pursuit of the universal end “as the intellect has reasoning as its

subordinate power for dealing with the particulars, the Will has free choice as its

subservient helper in sorting out appropriate particular means to a universal end.”141

Despite the fact that both faculties, the Intellect and the Will, pursue the same universal

end, which is Being (truth and good), the faculty of Intellect, according to Aquinas has

primacy over the Will, because the intellect’s end is truth and truth compels; yet, it does

not coerce. On the other hand, the end of the Will is good; and the good does not compel;

yet, the Will commands and coerces towards doing the good.142

III. B. 3. a. Autonomy and Limitation

Contrary to Aquinas, Duns Scotus decides that the Will is nobler and higher in rank than

the Intellect for the Will is able to resist “the needs of desire on the one hand, and the

dictates143

of intellect and reason, on the other.”144

Scotus recognizes the Will as an

independent faculty from the things as they are; and he acknowledges that the only

limitation of the Will is that “it cannot deny Being all together.”145

Therefore, the Will

can set limits to reason; however, it cannot limit the power of nature, whether the nature

of the inner man, his inclinations, or the nature of the exterior circumstances.

141

Ibid., 120. 142

Ibid., 116,120. 143

By dictates, Arendt does not mean orders as the Will is the organ of commands not reason. By dictates,

she means the compelling character of intellect being the organ of truth and truth is compelling. 144

Arendt, The Life of the Mind/Willing, 130. 145

Ibid.

50

Despite this limitation, Scotus insists that even in this case, the Will can still

exercise its omnipotence, by refusing to submit to the coercion of nature or necessity. The

exercise would be a mental exercise only. Arendt explains this mental freedom in the

following passage:

The Will’s autonomy… decisively limits the power of reason…but it does not

limit the power of nature, be it the nature of the inner man, called ‘inclination,’ or

that of exterior circumstances. The will is by no means omnipotent in its actual

effectiveness: its force consists solely in that it cannot be coerced to will. To

illustrate this mental freedom, Scotus gives the example of a man ‘who hurls

himself from a high place’…while man is necessarily falling, compelled by the

law of gravity, he remains free to continue ‘to will to fall,’ and can also of course

change his mind, in which case he would be unable to undo what he started

voluntarily and would find himself in the hands of necessity.”146

III. B. 3. b. The Characteristic of the Will

Arendt cherishes Duns Scotus among all philosophers. She believes that he is the only

philosopher who is willing to pay the price of contingency for the gift of freedom.147

She

writes “…his quintessential thought-contingency, the price gladly paid for freedom- he

had neither predecessors nor successors.”148

Duns Scotus believes that the Will’s main characteristic regarding freedom is that

its openness to contraries, namely, the Will can will the thing and its opposite at the same

time. Arendt quotes Scotus: “it is in the power of our will to will and to nill, which are

contraries, with respect to the same object.”149

Scotus asserts the idea that, as quoted by

Arendt, “the essential characteristic of our volitional act is … the power to choose

146

Ibid., 131-132. 147

Arendt praises Scotus very much and sees him, may be, as more important than Aquinas. She states “if

there is such a thing as Christian philosophy, then Duns Scotus would have to be recognized not only as

“the most important thinker of the Christian Middle Ages” but perhaps also as the unique one who did not

seek a compromise between the Christian faith and Greek philosophy” 148

Arendt, The Life of the Mind/Willing, 133. 149

Ibid., 130.

51

between opposite things and to revoke the choice once it has been made.”150

The attribute

of openness to contraries at the same time is peculiar to the Will. Neither desire nor

intellect can side with the Will regarding this criterion. Arendt interprets Duns Scotus as

follows: “An object presented to desire can only attract or repel, and an issue presented to

the intellect can only be affirmed or negated. But it is the basic quality of our will that we

may will or nill the object presented by reason or desire.”151

As a consequence to the ability of the Will to will and nill a particular object at

the same time, the Will is able to suspend a second volition. The ability of the mind to

suspend the second volition is the very test of freedom. Arendt affirms that: “[suspension]

is an important testimony to human freedom, to the mind’s ability to avoid all coercive

determination from outside.”152

Simply, the Will knows that it could have willed the

object that it actually nilled with no coercion. Scotus also confirms that “[the willing ego

knows that] a decision actually taken need not have been taken and a choice other than

the one actually made might have been made.”153

III. B. 3. c. The Unconditional Bias to Freedom

Arendt depicts Scotus as a rescuer of human freedom. In every argument freedom is

endangered because it confronts either the Divine providence or the law of causality.

150

Ibid. 151

Ibid. 152

Ibid., 131. 153

Ibid., 130.

52

Scotus makes choices and builds arguments to protect freedom. Indeed, his position on

contingency and the primacy of the Will is for the sake of saving freedom.154

We discussed earlier how Arendt interprets the letters of Paul and the philosophy

of Augustine as doubting the human competency, and hence, seeking the Divine

redemption to the split will. Scotus, unlike Paul and Augustine, finds no need for the

Divine interference to redeem the split will. Scotus admits that all of man’s natural

capabilities “follow the laws laid down by divine Fiat.”155

Therefore, he neither sees

contradiction between free will and nature, because man is part and parcel of nature; nor

does he see contradiction between free will and the Divine providence, because man was

created in God’s image.156

For Scotus, Will cannot nill the Being altogether as stated before. Thus, freedom

of the Will is limited. Nevertheless, the Will still has the capacity to freely affirm, negate,

love or hate whatever confronts it without being coerced by any cause of coercion,

157

whether it was an outside coercion or it was the coercion of another inside mental faculty,

namely: desire or reasoning.158

Freedom in Scotus has a limitation and a capacity: a limitation of a man who is

created and subjected to God’s Will, and a capacity to have unconditional position from

being. In other words, to love a being is a position, to hate a being is a position, and to

deny or to accept a being is a position. All these positions are taken freely. According to

154

Ibid., 135. 155

Ibid. 156

Ibid. 157

Ibid., 136. 158

Ibid., 135.

53

Scotus, as Arendt interprets him, nothing could coerce the Will to take a particular

position; even if there is an external coercion, the Will still could not be coerced!

III. B. 3. d. Causality and Contingency

Free will was problematic, not only because of its apparent contradiction with the Divine

providence, but also because of the law of causality. Arendt explains that “theoretically,

the trouble has always been that Free Will… seems utterly incompatible, not just with

divine providence, but with the law of causality.”159

She adds that Scotus knew the law of

causality in its Aristotelian version as “a chain of causation that would make movement

intelligible and ultimately lead to an unmoved source of all motions, the unmoved mover,

a cause that itself is not caused.”160

Scotus accepts Aristotle’s law of causality; nevertheless, he accepts it not

uncritically because if he accepted the law of causality as it is, freedom would be at stake.

Scotus, on the other hand, did not reject the law of causality, neither did he refute it.

However, he developed the theory of causality and modified it into a theory that can

accommodate or rather explain freedom.

Arendt claims that Scotus began his discussion by asking the question “whether

the act of the will is caused in the will by the object moving it or by the will moving

itself.”161

In fact, he rejects both answers. To explain, he rejects the first one, will is

moved by object because it is entirely contradicting to his principle on the Will’s

159

Ibid., 32. 160

Ibid.,137. 161

Ibid.

54

autonomy and hence of freedom (or his unconditional commitment to freedom). Scotus,

as well, rejects the second answer that the Will is moving itself because it contradicts his

principle of the Will’s limitation. Arendt also adds that if the second answer is accepted,

there would be consequences to volition, which could not be explained. She did not

clarify what these consequences are.

The rejection of both answers led Scotus to adopt a median position and to

develop a theory called “theory of concurrent-partial causes,” which can save both

necessity and freedom, as Arendt argues. To explain his theory of concurrent causes,

another factor should be explained. It is Scotus’s critique of Aristotle’s account of

causality.

Scotus noticed that “the strength of the argument, or, rather, its explicatory force,

lies in the assumption that no more than one cause is sufficient to explain why something

should be rather than not-be, that is to explain motion and change.”162

Arendt argues that

Scotus challenges the chain-oriented theory of causality and proposes a theory of

causality that includes many concurrent causes for a thing to-be. The prime example for

Scotus is the simple daily fact of reproduction: “two independent substances, male and

female, must come together to bring forth a child.” As a result, “he reaches the theory

that all change occurs because a plurality of causes happens to coincide, and the

coincidence engenders the texture of reality in human affairs.”163

As a matter of fact, the theory of partial-concurrent causes proved that the very

phenomenon, change and motion, that led Aristotle to the law of causality, also led

162

Ibid. 163

Ibid.

55

Scotus to the notion that change and motion are ruled by contingency.164

His theory led

him even to a different concept of contingency than that of Aristotle. Scotus prefers to

say that something is caused contingently rather than saying that something is contingent.

Arendt quotes Scotus:

by contingent, said Scotus, “I do not mean something that is not necessary or

which was not always in existence, but something whose opposite could have

occurred at the time that this actually did. That is why I do not say that something

is contingent, but that something is caused contingently.165

(Italics added)

Arendt explains Scotus in her own words by saying that “it is precisely the causative

element in human affairs that condemns them to contingency and unpredictability.” She

praises Scotus for his quite challenging position on the notion of contingency itself.

Scotus was the only thinker, according to Arendt, for “whom the word contingent has no

derogatory association.” For him, “contingency is a positive mode of Being, just as

necessary is another mode.”166

He was also quite shocking for his opponents, who were

in doubt about contingency. He confronts them with this example: “let all those who deny

contingency be tortured until they admit that it would be possible not to be tortured.”167

For Scotus’ quite unique position on contingency, Arendt states that “nothing indeed

could be in greater contradiction to every philosophical tradition than this insistence on

the contingent character of processes.”168

164

Ibid., 138. 165

Ibid. 166

Ibid., 134. 167

Ibid. Arendt said that this example is borrowed by Scotus from Avicenna. Scotus was influenced by the

Avicenna philosophy on contingency. 168

Ibid., 138. Scotus was a Franciscan monk who was committed to his Christian faith; for hence, Arendt

finds his position on Freedom is quite unique and challenging.

56

III. C. The Modern Age

With the rise of modernity, there was more need for an organ for future, since modernity

obviously emphasized the future and the concept of progress. While medieval

speculations regarding the Will were still dominant in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth

centuries, the discussions following Kant were dramatically different. 169

However,

Arendt skipped Kant because, for him, “the Will is not a special mental capability distinct

from thinking, but practical reason, a Vernunftwille not unlike Aristotle’s nous

praktikos.”170

She also continues to justify the absence of the Will as a mental faculty

from Kant’s philosophy: “Kant’s Will is neither freedom of choice (liberum arbitrium)

nor its own cause; for Kant, sheer spontaneity, which he often called “absolute

spontaneity,” exists only in thinking, Kant’s will is delegated by reason to be its

executive organ in all matters of conduct.”171

Arendt observes that with the last stage of the modern age: “Will begins to be

substituted for reason as man’s highest mental faculty.”172

At the turn of the Nineteenth

Century, “it became fashionable to equate Willing and Being.” For this reason, Arendt

proposes that for the philosophers of German Idealism, the Will was not a mental faculty,

but is transformed into an ontological entity.173

She states that for Schiller “no power of

man but his will,” for Schopenhauer “the Kantian thing in itself is the Will,” for

Schelling, “in the final and highest instance there is no other Being than Will.” This view

169

Ibid., 19. 170

Ibid., 149. 171

Ibid. 172

Ibid., 20. 173

Ibid., 158.

57

on Will finally culminated in Hegel.174

Due to this transformation of the Will and its

eventual equation with Being, Arendt exempts the philosophers of the Will from her

historical exposition for she considers the Will a faculty of mind, not an ontological

entity. She clarified “ [I have] omitted from our considerations that body of thought,

German Idealism, in which sheer speculation in the realm of metaphysics perhaps

reached its climax together with its end.”175

Two modern philosophers were still relevant to her objectives: Nietzsche and

Heidegger. Nietzsche, who refuted the theory of the freedom of the Will for the last time,

was depicted by Arendt as a convert to ancient philosophy whose main inquiry was into

Being and his thought of eternal return was a conversion to the ancient cyclical concept

of time which means restricting the Will to willing that whatever happens shall happen

again and again.176

While Nietzsche repudiated the Will, Heidegger broke later with the

modern philosophy and its belief in progress, and he concluded that the Will should will

not-to-will.177

174

Ibid., 20. 175

Ibid., 157-8. 176

Ibid., 21. 177

Ibid., 22.

58

IV THE RELATION

Having explained Arendt’s exposition of political and philosophical freedom, I shall turn

now to the question of: What is the relation between political and philosophical freedom,

if any? As a matter of fact, Arendt sees no relation between the two types of freedom

other than the utter opposition of one to the other. I, however, infer three main aspects of

opposition between the two types: first, the origin or the human experiences that gave

rise to each one of them; second, the location of both of each; third, the conditions that

determine the existence or the experience of each one of them. The best description of the

relation between the two types is that they are completely distinct and differentiated from

each other.

IV. A. The Three Aspects of Differentiation

IV. A. 1. The Origin

The basic human experience that gave rise to each one of the two types of freedom is

completely different in nature. Political freedom originated in the human experience of

inserting ones’ self in the world by words and deeds. Philosophical freedom, on the

contrary, originated in the human experience of withdrawing ones’ self from the world

into the inwardness of one’s self, which no other selves has access to. Hence, political

freedom would have an appearance in the world, while philosophical freedom would not

have an appearance. Arendt considers anything that has no appearance in the world as

unpolitical by definition, such as experiencing one’s own will.

59

According to Arendt, the original freedom is the political freedom. Men,

originally, lived together in a political community and experienced freedom in their

mutual interactions. She elaborates that “we first become aware of freedom or its

opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves.”178

She

affirms that the experience of inner freedom would not be possible if it were not preceded

by the experience of political freedom. She states that “man would know nothing of inner

freedom if he had not first experienced a condition of being free as a worldly tangible

reality.”179

The World, which exists because of the human existence, is a decisive factor in

the human experiences of freedom since the world functions as the scene of human

action. To be more specific, action does not take place in nature. If man existed in nature,

he would be reduced to animal laborans. That is, he will be occupied only with satisfying

his bodily needs and protecting his body from dangers of nature. On the other hand, the

World, which is conditioned by the human activity of work, is the scene of human action

since it gives the possibility for human beings to liberate themselves from mere bodily

needs and to fabricate a world of their own that would be a scene for action; “work…

corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence.”180

Political freedom in the Greek experience was conditioned by having a home (or

private space) in the world. Obviously, this is not guaranteed for everyone. Having one’s

private space in the world as a condition to be free in the public realm is automatically

178


Ibid. 180

Arendt, The Human Condition, 7.

60

excluding the one who does not have his own space. This misfortune applies to many

groups in the polis, such as slaves, women and foreigners. Consequently, how could one

who is a slave in the world, for instance, experience freedom? This was the burden and

concern of Epictetus, who was a freed slave. Epictetus, as Arendt depicts, was looking for

a home in the world, but he did not find one. Thus, he turned inside his own self to find a

home that is not conditioned by any external conditions. As a consequence, the

experience of freedom in the outer world was transposed to the inner world. And hence,

the experience of inner freedom is a derivative in character. “The experiences of inner

freedom are derivative in that they always presuppose a retreat from the world, where

freedom was denied, into an inwardness to which no other has access.”181

Not only

Epictetus transposed the experience itself from outside to inside, he also transformed the

worldly relations that conditioned freedom into relations within one’s own self.182

In

other words, as the outer experience of freedom was conditioned by owning a home and

liberating ones’ self from necessities by ruling and dominating over others, who are not

free, the experience of inner freedom must be the same. Arendt clarifies this transposing

experience by stating that:

Epictetus transposed these worldly relations [having a place in the world and

having power over others] into relations within man’s own self, whereby he

discovered that no power is so absolute as that which man yields over himself,

and that the inward space where man struggles and subdues himself is more

entirely his own, namely, more securely shielded from outside interference, than

any worldly home could ever be.183

181


Ibid., 146. 183

Ibid., 148.

61

The Experience of Epictetus could be interpreted as an early attempt to break up the

notion of freedom from the notion of politics for the sake of granting freedom to slaves

and reach a formulation “through which one may be a slave in the world and still be

free.”184

IV. A. 2. The Location

Understanding the experiences that gave rise to each one of the two freedoms, it is

possible to say that a main difference between both of them is the location of each one. In

other words, one could ask the question “what is the location of freedom?” Experiencing

freedom in the external world, where freedom would have an appearance and worldly

relations, is the political freedom; while experiencing freedom in the internal life, where

freedom hides from the world and lacks an appearance is philosophical freedom. Ilya

Winham agrees that “to attribute freedom to the (I-will) even if you could not do what

you will to do, is to separate freedom from movement in the world and thus from action

(I-can), and to locate it in intercourse with yourself.”185

Arendt, however, does not ask the question “where is the location of freedom?”

She rather asks the question “where is the proper location of freedom?”186

As a matter of

fact, Arendt does not see philosophical freedom as a genuine or a correct from of

184

Ibid., 147. Arendt does not clarify why the freed slaves of the first century A.D. did not struggle in the

outer world to have a “space” and to have “freedom” instead of formulating the doctrine of Stoicism, which

Arendt regards as having no relation with philosophy other than its name. 185

Winham, “Rereading Hannah Arendt’s What is Freedom?,” 93. 186


62

practicing freedom. Her reason is that the quality of freedom should be the I-can, where it

manifests in the outer world with other fellows; while philosophical freedom is a quality

of the I-will, where it is limited only to the inner realm. Arendt’s real concern in posing

the question in the form of “what is the proper location of freedom?” is to re-marry

politics and freedom again after they had been divorced for long centuries of

philosophical speculations centered on the theme of inner freedom or free will.

Arendt points out that it is only when the location of human freedom is transposed

from outside into inside, it is possible to incorporate the problem of freedom or the

question of freedom into the discipline of philosophy. Philosophy did not deal with the

subject of freedom in the political realm before theology accomplished the job of

transposing locations. This is for the reason that philosophy deals with human beings in

singularity only, not in plurality. When freedom was transposed into the inner domain of

man, it was ready to go under philosophical speculations. Thus, freedom became a

synonym to free will. As Arendt puts it:

Only when the early Christians, and especially Paul, discovered a kind of freedom

which had no relation to politics, could the concept of freedom enter the history of

philosophy when it was experienced as something occurring in the intercourse

between men. Free will and freedom became synonymous notions, and the

presence of freedom was experienced in complete solitude, “where no man might

hinder the hot contention wherein I had engaged with myself,” the deadly conflict

which took place in the “inner dwelling” of the soul and the dark “chamber of the

heart.187

And she also reiterates the same idea in the following passage:

…philosophers first began to show an interest in the problem of freedom when

freedom was no longer experienced in acting and in associating with others but in

187

Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” 158. The quote of Arendt is for Augustine.

63

willing and in the intercourse with one’s self, when, briefly, freedom had become

free will. Since then, freedom has been a philosophical problem of the first

order…188

IV. A. 3. The Conditions

Having explained the differences between the origin and location of both philosophical

and political freedom, it is likely to recapitulate the conditions of each. Neither occurs

naturally or automatically, but there are conditions for each one to exist or to be

experienced.

Political freedom could not exist in a place other than where men live together in

a body-politic that is regulated by laws, norms and traditions. Not every body-politic

secures action-based interactions between its members. Only the body-politic founded

upon the principle of making action possible in a public realm (where agents can relate to

each other by words and deeds). This is in addition to the condition of equality between

its agents (i.e. not allowing the form of ruler-ship among the agents, neither to rule, nor to

be ruled). Moreover, the intersubjective space and the bodies of agents should be in a

secure and safe state for interactions, and must not be threatened by fear and insecurity.

Arendt recapitulates political freedom by stating:

Political freedom is distinct from philosophical freedom in being clearly a quality

of the I-can and not of the I-will. Since it is possessed by the citizen rather than by

man in general, it can manifest itself only in communities, where the many who

live together have their intercourse both in word and in deed regulated by a great

number of rapport-laws, customs, habits, and the like.189

On the other hand, philosophical freedom is conditioned by isolation and solitude. No

action in philosophical freedom, but only training is required to exercise ones’ will and

188

Ibid., 163. 189


64

master the self-inwardness. Moreover, philosophical freedom (or exercising free will)

does not need a public space to be experienced nor does it need other fellows and hence it

needs no recognition. Indeed, nothing could verify or testify free will because it has no

appearance; it is completely solipsistic. Arendt writes: “Nothing indeed can be more

frightening than the notion of solipsistic freedom- the “feeling” that me standing apart,

isolated from everyone else, is due to free will, that nothing and nobody can be held

responsible for it but me myself.”190

As a matter of fact, political and philosophical freedoms are limited. The political

type is limited because of the law or the constitution that includes normative principles

even if they are human-made; in other words, there is what “ought” to be done. Arendt

refers to Montesquieu on this matter. As the French thinker says:

It is true that in democracies the people seem to act as they please; but political

liberty does not consist in an unlimited freedom. In…societies directed by laws,

liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not

being constrained to do what we ought not to will.191

Similarly, free will is, as well, limited. The Will could not deny Being altogether, as Duns

Scotus pointed out. Philosophical freedom is also limited by the body’s vulnerabilities.

And this is how suicide was justified in Stoicism (i.e. when outside circumstances were

no longer bearable). According to the Stoics, life after death is another form of being,

exactly as life on earth is a form of being.192

190

Ibid., 195-6. 191

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 150. 192


65

The difference between the political and the philosophical freedom has not been

outlined clearly before Arendt outlined it in “What is Freedom?” and in the Life of the

Mind/Willing. In our understanding, we tend to think that free will (Philosophical

freedom) and freedom (political freedom) are synonyms. In fact, Arendt points out that

only Montesquieu noticed the difference: not because he was interested in the question

itself, but because he realized that free will, as articulated in his time, did not suffice for

political and the legal purposes. In the chapter entitled “Of the Liberty of the Subject,”

Montesquieu explains that “philosophical liberty consists in the free exercise of the will;

or at least, if we must speak agreeably of our will. Political liberty consists in security, or

at least in the opinion that we enjoy security.”193

IV. B. The Reversal and the Problem of Sovereignty

Another aspect that might shed light on the significance of understanding the two types of

freedom as separate phenomena is to ask the question: what if both types have been

exercised inter-changeably? What if we attempted to exercise the I-can in the internal

realm and the I-will in the external realm? Arendt suggests that it is irrelevant to exercise

the I-can in the inner self because the I-can always expresses itself in the outside and

always has an appearance. Political freedom consists mainly in action, and since I could

not act with myself, I could not experience the political freedom in solitude: “action… is

never possible in solitude or isolation.”194

193

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 183. 194

Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, 59.

66

Similarly, philosophical freedom as an attempt to master the inwardness has no

appearance; therefore, it is politically irrelevant. Arendt argues that “this inner feeling

remains without outer manifestations and hence is by definition politically irrelevant.”195

However, the I-will might have the ambition to cross the boundaries of the self

and to extend itself in the public realm. In this case, if the philosophical freedom is

applied as such on the political realm, it will lead to endangering and cancelling political

freedom. To explain, the I-will constitutes itself in giving commands and demanding

obedience.196

The mastering of the internal realm means that one should be sovereign on

his own self, that is to say, having the supreme authority to command one’s self and

coerce it to obey.

Most conspicuously, if the I-will extends itself to the political realm, where others

also exist, it will exercise the same capacities: the capacity to command and to coerce for

demanding obedience; ultimately, to be sovereign over others. Exercising philosophical

freedom as such in the public realm implies hierarchy and presupposes inequality; hence,

to preclude the possibility of action, action should be between equals. Not to mention that

the mode of interaction in the command-obedience model is incompatible with the mode

of interaction in action-based models. The problem of sovereignty is a manifestation of

the exercise of free will in the public realm. Arendt asserts that: “…as such it was applied

to the political realm and thus has become a political problem as well. Because of the

philosophical shift from action to will-power…the ideal of freedom ceased to be

195


As Aquinas pointed out Will commands and coerce while truth compels. Arendt, The Life of the Mind/

Willing, 120.

67

virtuosity…and became sovereignty, the ideal of free will, independent from others and

eventually prevailing against them.”197

The faculty that identifies itself in commanding and obeying could not be a

faculty for freedom, but could only be a faculty for oppression, and therefore something

anti-political. Arendt explains that “the faculty of will and will-power in and by itself…is

and essentially nonpolitical and even ant-political.”198

The conflict that is inherent in the

formulation of I-will and I-nill or the I-will and I-cannot shall be transformed in the

public realm between numerous wills which, needless to say, would be in continuous

struggles and conflicts. In this case, the most powerful individual will, will end up taking

over the public realm and oppressing other wills. The other possibility that Arendt

explains is when an organized group succeed to reach a consensus in the “general will.”

Arendt argues that any political theory, which implies equating between free will

and freedom, leads to either one of two fatal consequences: either to cancel political

freedom entirely or to grant freedom of the will to one individual or one group at the

expense of canceling the freedom of others. Arendt elaborates as follows:

Politically, this identification of freedom with sovereignty is perhaps the most

pernicious and dangerous consequence of the philosophical equation of freedom

and free will. For it leads either to a denial of human freedom… or to the insight

that the freedom of one man, or a group, or a body politic can be purchased only

at the prices of the freedom, i.e., the sovereignty, of all others.199

As philosophical freedom or the free will requires sovereignty, which is obviously

fatal to political freedom, Arendt adds an additional protective guarantee to political

197


Ibid., 164. 199

Ibid.

68

freedom. It is the condition of non-sovereignty. Freedom and sovereignty cannot be

identical and cannot exist simultaneously. Freedom consists in action while sovereignty

constitutes in command. While Arendt did not solve the problem of how the condition of

non-sovereignty could be realized, we can understand how a body-politic based on

sovereignty turns out to be inimical to freedom. Arendt explains that:

Where men wish to be sovereign, as individuals or as organized groups, they must

submit to the oppression of the will, be this, the individual will with which I force

myself, or the “general will” of an organized group. If men wish to be free, it is

precisely sovereignty they must renounce.200

200

Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” 164-5.

69

V THE TRANSFORMATION

Having explained Arendt’s unique exposition and differentiation between political and

philosophical freedom, it still seems that the problem of freedom has not been settled. In

modern times we claim that we are for freedom; simultaneously, we assert that the notion

of sovereignty is indispensable for keeping the body-politic functioning. The

contradiction seems left unsettled.

Not surprisingly, Hannah Arendt did not aim at reconciliation between opposing

rivals, though she is unconditionally biased towards political freedom. Arendt went back

to the pre-Socratic Greeks to find refuge in a world where freedom was constituted in

action, not in willing.201

However, she admits that human experiences that led to the

discovery of the I-will and the human experiences of the philosophical freedom are

impossible to undo. Philosophical freedom is rooted and integrated in the body of the

philosophical, the religious and even the political traditions. Arendt explains how the

philosophical notion of freedom insinuated itself into the principles of the men of action.

She asserts that: “the philosophical ancestry of our current political notion of freedom is

still quite manifest in the eighteenth–century political writers, when, for instance, Thomas

Paine insisted that “to be free it is sufficient [for man] that he wills it,” a word which

Lafayette applied to the nation-state.”202

201

I do not know why Hannah just ignored the very fact that she is a woman and thus, if she had existed in

the ancient Greek times, she would not have granted freedom! Her denial of the gender question is obvious

and remarked by scholars like Seyla Benhabib. Look at Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah

Arendt. For this reason, I consider Arendt’s study of the Greek experience as a methodology not as a

normative reference. 202

Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” 163.

70

How could freedom be protected from such an assault of the commanding and

oppressing faculty? Since it is apparently impossible to undo the experiences of the past,

I argue that Arendt’s insistence on the notion of beginning as a way of action and a way

to express one’s freedom is actually an attempt for the transformation of the faculty of the

Will into a faculty of Beginning. To argue for the thesis of transformation, I shall explain

how Arendt has been inspired by Augustine and Kant to articulate her notion of

beginning, which starts off from the mind but ends up in the external world.

Arendt calls the philosophy of Augustine “a philosophy of natality.” His

speculations on the creation of Man might have led him to define human beings as natals,

not as mortals like the Greeks. Augustine’s addresses of the question of “why it was

necessary to create Man, apart from and above all other living beings,” and he gave a

rather surprising reply. He argues that “in order that there may be novelty, a beginning

never before existed, that is, not before Man’s creation.”203

Moreover, he gives much

more significance to the creation of Man than to the creation of the world. He designates

two different words for the creation of each: he used the word initium for the creation of

Man and principium for the creation of heaven and earth. Augustine assumes that other

creatures were created in numbers, while Man “was created in the singular and continued

to be ‘propagated from individuals.’”204

The individuality of man, which accompanied

him from his very beginning, expresses itself in the Will. Thus, Arendt infers from

Augustine that “every man, being created in the singular, is a new beginning by virtue of

203


Ibid., 109.

71

his birth.”205

Hence, the beginning, which implies novelty, is the very manifestation of

the Will. As the creation of man has never been preceded by any similar creature and as

he himself is a beginning, he is able to initiate beginnings.

The beginning as a beginning that has not been preceded is one determining

element of Arendt’s concept of freedom. The other element is spontaneity, which Arendt

draws obviously from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where he proved that the faculty

of beginning a series is an act of freedom. Kant explains that:

…the faculty of beginning a series in time entirely on its own is thereby proved,

now we are permitted also to allow that in the course of the world different series

may begin on their own as far as their causality is concerned and to ascribe to the

substances in those series the faculty of acting from freedom.206

[Italics added]

Kant differentiates between the absolute and the relative beginning, which Arendt takes

to be very similar to Augustine’s differentiation between principium and initium.207

The

relative beginning is preceded by another state of affairs, but only in time not in causality.

Kant claims that:

One should not, however, be stopped here by a misunderstanding, namely, that

since a successive series in the world can have only a comparatively first

beginning, because a state of the world must always precede it, perhaps no

absolutely first beginning of the series is possible during the course of the world.

For here we are talking of an absolute beginning not as far as time is concerned

but as far as causality is concerned.208

[Italics added]

Nevertheless, Arendt points out that there is something remarkable regarding

what Kant calls “absolute spontaneity.” That is to say, spontaneity, as Kant argues in the

205

Ibid. 206

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A450/B478. 207


Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A450/B478.

72

above passage exists only in thinking and not in willing. Therefore, Arendt infers that

Kant’s Will is not a separate mental faculty, but “a practical reason.” In other words,

“Kant’s Will is delegated by reason to be its executive organ in all matters of conduct.”209

Arendt criticizes Kant in the example of the chair, whereby he attempts to

illustrate what he means by absolute beginning regarding causality, which he considers

to be the human act of freedom. Kant states that:

If (for example) I am now entirely free, and get up from my chair without the

necessarily determining influence of natural causes, then in this occurrence, along

with its natural consequences to infinity, there begins an absolutely new series,

even though as far as time is concerned this occurrence is only the continuation of

a previous series. For this decision and deed do not lie within the succession of

merely natural effects and are not a mere continuation of them; rather, the

determining natural causes of that series entirely cease in regard to this

event…therefore it must be called, not as far as time is concerned but in regard to

causality, an absolutely first beginning of a series of appearances.210

[Italics

added]

Arendt’s main critique is that this example does not count for a free act because it lacks

an important element, which is the element of the role of mind in the act. Only when

there is “something in mind he wishes to do” does this series of events count for freedom

in Arendt’s account. She objects to Kant by saying:

…there is something fundamentally wrong with Kant’s example. Only if he,

arising from his chair, has something in mind he wishes to do, does this ‘event’

start a ‘new series’; if this is not the case, if he habitually gets up at this time or if

he gets up in order to fetch something he needs for his present occupation, this

event is itself ‘the continuation of a preceding series.’211

209

Arendt, The Life of the Mind/ Willing,149. 210

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A450/B478. 211


73

Therefore, in Arendt’s view, this example would be significant in relation to her concept

of freedom as spontaneity, as long as it is reinterpreted as an attempt to reconcile “new

series of acts and states” with the time continuum that this ‘new series’ interrupts.” In her

critique, Arendt tries to make the interruption of the genuine unprecedented act to the

time continuum a comprehensible act of freedom.

VI CONCLUSION

In conclusion, freedom for Arendt constitutes in bringing something new into

existence, (i.e. something which has not been existed before). Thus, freedom causes

events to happen, which appears in the guise of a miracle. And this miracle could not be

predicted beforehand by any given state of affairs. The choice between two given things

is not an act of freedom at all, for the two possibilities of choice already exist. Arendt

asserts that to create something new, we should begin or initiate, and we should act

together, not for or against others. Using the Kantian concept of spontaneity and the

Augustinian concept of beginning, the faculty of Will would be no longer a faculty of

command and coercion, but a faculty of future, of action, and of beginning.

74

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the difference between political and philosophical freedom

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